Because the Republicans are like the Keystone Cops with no real direction doesn't mean that President Obama's compass is correctly calibrated either.

The reality in the US is that politicians and presidents that have passed and signed laws have over promised and failure to deliver on all of them is inevitable. The Republicans can't formulate a vision that makes sense and the president continues to promise things that can't be delivered (even by taking more funding from the wealthy).

Lincoln was correct when he said a country divided cannot stand. We're seeing it crack and break in front of our eyes. That should sadden us all.

Unfortunately it's the taxpayers to ultimately loose when it's leadership is bent on only politics. What happened to hope and change? Congress is rudderless and the White House thinks it's God. Too bad for the people of the US. We deserve better.

Possibly the President is merely helping the Republicans self-annihilate, or continue on the path of extinction. As they continue with their agenda, they become less relevant, and therefore, less able to understand the demographics of the citizens of our country.

they reality is the president's right to challenge the republican's which dont have anything that binds them at all.. defense - that platforms dead in a recession - economy - what plans are they putting forth ( they have them but there's no consensus or resolve), christian values - I do think this is going to become an issue as the landscape changes and the population is more Hispanic who are more center-right then center-left on family values.

Conversely the democrats appeal to the masses - whatever you want we'll get you- resulting in devaluation of the dollar, a widening deficit, and dragging down the world economy in the process but who cares it's still the safest place to invest in, until it's not.. Just listen to people on the street Obama promises we'll have medicare (unfunded and unfundable and now 700 billion less thanks to the ACA), social security - (there aren't enough people putting into the system to sustain it and the populations getting older), Medicaid - it's another unfunded liability which neith erparty has a handle on to fix.

The Republicans reduced themselves to absurdity with no help from anyone; Obama is simply exploiting their stupidity by following Napoleon's dictum: never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake. Now he is exploiting the consequence of their mistake.

The Tea Party is Republicans' worst enemy, an enemy within. And since it operates to radicalise primaries, there is little the Fat Ones in D.C. can do about it. With Fox and Limbaugh and the like peddling their fanaticism and hatred to inflame the base, the Tea Party will grow stronger, and the Republicans who want to govern will fade away. Then the party will die.

"Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them." - Barry Goldwater, 1964 Republican candidate for President, very far to the right of the party in those days.

And going larger than that, the current Republican party is the enemy within America. An inflammatory statement to be sure, but I witness GOP politicians at every level of government, actively subverting democracy and the will of the majority, rather than courting public opinion.

Republican ideology harbors contempt for entire classes of American citizens, you need look no further than this comment board for evidence of it. Latino voters cannot be bought with immigration reform, they know their skin is the wrong color to be a true conservative.

Mitt Romney is still the most fitting GOP avatar, and Obama is gladly moving the Democratic party squarely into the center of 21st Century American political spectrum. GOP is going to have to agree, in their souls, with some Democratic positions if they want to move back to the center.

The fight going on in congress and the media today is NOT really about The Deficit, it's about how to break down American democracy and government. The top 2% benefit from austerity, and ONLY the 2%. Everyone else suffers, especially the poor (who spend government largess locally, thus benefitting the economy).

The Republican Dream:

A sweatshop America where compliant workers live in ignorance, fear, illness and poverty, while the 2% laugh and invest overseas.

The 2% blow smoke (through their Republican poodles) at everyone about what we need to do in this country. It's all lies, deflection and theft.

Whatever a Republican tells you, you can bet it's the wishes of his/her paymaster in the 2%.

An immigration bill will be passed. We will avoid war with Iran. The economy will improve. The Republican Party will be forced to move left or die. Obama will have a great second term with or without the Republicans.

Perhaps his lasting presidential legacy, Obama has championed two founding tenets of liberal-progressive government, 1) tax, regulate and spend to grow the size and power of central government, and 2) expand a debilitating, partisan voter dependency upon government with bribes of government benefits.

Here are some of the Obama Administration’s new, excessive and costly regulations:
• While Obama has deferred most of his environmental agenda items until his “more flexible” second term, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had the costliest regulations in 2012 amounting to $172 billion;
• The widely unpopular Affordable Care Act (a.k.a., “Obama Care”) legislation continues to burden American business with an additional 44 million paperwork hours (over 21 thousand man-years labor) needed from the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Center for Medicare Services and the Food and Drug Administration;
• The controversial Dodd-Frank financial reforms legislation requires 32.7 million new paperwork hours (over 15 thousand man-years labor) from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission;
• Obama has enacted regulations amounting to over $34.6 billion in new regulatory costs to our 30 largest corporations;
• The most costly of all new regulations fall under the requirements for energy efficiency and fuel conservation totaling $311 billion.

I admit to being sensitive on this subject. I've been reading The WSJ for 30 years now. The Journal through that time period has fulsomely praised conservative leaders who espouse conservative principles without apology or compromise. Reagan, Thatcher, and (for a while) W are the Journal's examples of leadership.

But if a Democratic President espouses liberal principles, that's not leadership per the Journal. It's partisan politics, it's selfish, it's provocative, it's crass.

I'm not going to permit the rules to change. Not on my watch. The rules will not be that Ronald Reagan gets to act one way with praise, and Barack Obama in acting the same way gets criticism. Nope, not doing.

Obama could have produced a run-of-the-mill vapid speech urging unity but he is uniquely placed by his own personal history and circumstance to give a speech of vision and ideology. In truth he has had few of them as he has shied away from being provocative and tried to not look too threatening. I think the second inaugural address he gave became all the more powerful because of his own place as the first black president of the U.S. and he was able to channel that context subtly and effectively in the way he talked about equality and collective action, the role of government for good, and his development of civil liberties encompassing women, blacks and gays.

R.M. | WASHINGTON, DC wrote "His agenda, in other words, is to slowly destroy the opposition by provoking the opposition to destroy itself."
--- Seems like a reasonable strategy. Maybe Obama senses that the Republicans might be trying to right themselves after the 2012 Presidential election - don't want to encourage that now...
--- I wonder who the real casualties will be in pushing such an agenda to slowly destroy the opposition???

This will be an interesting four years. I can't say I have much sympathy for the Republicans, they were handed many olive branches that they chose to turn into lashes, but I'm not looking forward to the rancor, and the personal relationships throughout the country that these hurdles are going to test.

The guys says 'That's all part of the plan.' While I expected 'That's all part of the game.'

OK, playing with our lives is not a game (though politicians seem to think so), setting your agenda as a politician, whether Rep or Dem is not about the messy process of legislative compromise to actually get something done. I wonder how many of Boehners' buddys expressed willingnexx to compromise in their acceptance/statement of purpose speaches since being elected, this time around or, especially before.

As is Obama's promise to preserve Social Security and Medicare, his belief that climate change exists, and his mention of gay rights. Those are all positions that are supported by most American people.

So why are those provocative statements while Reagan's speech was statesmanlike? (Channeling Peggy Noonan, for whom all Reagan speeches are great and every Obama speech is petty and crass.)

We're more polarized these days. Had Romney won and given Reagan's speech, headlines would read "Romney declares war on Democrats." What was consensus yesterday is a fiercely debated 51-49 issue today. The only way a consensus would consider a speech reasonable today would be to do what Obama was so good at in the past; vagueness. "American is the great country in the world. The children are our future. Energy independence. Fix health care. All men are created equal. Thank you men and women of the armed forces. We must face these challenges. We must make tough choices. Yes, we can. God bless America."

He really is intent on taking down the Republicans no matter the cost. This is how I'd summarize his speech. I just wish we weren't all in this temple as well.
-O Lord God, remember me, I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes. And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein

"Take down the opponent, no matter the cost" sounds remarkably like an analysis of the Congressional Republicans' strategy of the past 4 years. Of course, they expected that the cost would be to the country, not to their party. Oops!

Well we have established that don't see the deficit as a problem, so you are blind. And Jouris really doesn't like the republicans, so he is willing to bring the Temple down. Yeah, I think it was right on.

jouris is gonna retort that he's a Republican in exile. He wants to burn the GOP to the ground so that it'll be reborn like a phoenix, having shed all traces of conservatism, neo-conservativism, and libertarianism. It'll be a tolerant party that embraces gay marriage, abortion rights, taxpayer-funded contraception, and amnesty. A party that believes that what makes this country great is its beautiful diversity of taxes. A party that recognizes that the federal government is the most efficient allocator of resources. In other words, another Democratic Party, but with a different name.

"Well we have established that don't see the deficit as a problem, so you are blind."

No, we didn't establish that. We established that I am skeptical of your confidence that you have this figured out, and the global bond markets do not. But actually, I am a fiscal conservative who would be more aggressive in attacking the deficit than are either Democrats (bad) or Republicans (worse). I'd wager to say that I am a budget extremist. I am not one to shout about the deficit, but as the shouters tend to be those who increase the deficit the most, I'm fine with not being in that crowd.

Whereas I just want to burn it to the ground out of respect for justice and love of mercy and submission to the ways of the LORD.

By the way, did you notice that Micah 6:8 was used in the invocation? I think that passage was used at Carter's inauguration and at least one of Clinton's. I wonder what makes that the Democrats' favorite scripture.

For the rich men thereof are full of violence, and the inhabitants thereof have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
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A reference to the Wall Street Journal. Also, math.
-Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.
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Taxes, you deserve 'em.
-...Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied;
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A reference to healthful foods. Clearly he is describing arugula.
-...and that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.
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A defense of government waste. And a description of what happens to revenue when it gets to Congress.

In chess, a Knight's fork means your opponent faces an inevitable choice of leaving either one or more pieces in peril. The Republican Party, by letting the most doctrinaire set the agenda; have produced a huge number of opportunities to use the political equivalent of the Knight's fork. If you let the inmates run the asylum, it is easy to be labeled as crazy. The only solution is to recognize that the bay at the moon element has nowhere else to go and can be ignored.

The opposition to his objections, though, isn't the Republicans. It's the debt. All his objectives cost money, money we're running out of fast. That's what puts all of the Democrats priorities, and the whole welfare state, in danger. If he does nothing, if there is no comprise, it will fall, and he will fail. Whether its relatively worse for the Republicans doesn't compensate for that.
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Here's the only mention of the deficit..
-We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.
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Right, so in other words we're not going to- "we must make the hard choices...we reject the belief America must choose...". You can reject a budget from the House, but you can't just reject the bond market not lending you any money, which will eventually happen if nothing is done. The relationship of politicians to each other is political, but the relationship between politicians and the bond market is mathematical.

And according to LBJ, we're winning the war in Vietnam. It's denominated in short term, we're talking about long term. My Lord!
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He spent his Presidency ignoring the reports, and this President seems determined to get through four years without looking at the AFS.

Neither Vietnam nor President Obama's reports are relevant to the item at hand, which is that the bond market loans money to the U.S. at a 3% nominal rate for 30 years.

So why should President Obama talk about the deficit? The deficit is not a problem to those who walk the walk, i.e. those who put their money to work. It only bothers those who talk the talk, i.e. rival politicians.

The bond market does no such thing. The Federal Reserve does so, via QE. What price the bond markets would set in an undistorted market is not information that we have available at the moment.
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Should you care? You should if you don't think that QE can continue forever. (And continuing QE forever will monetize the debt, which will be highly inflationary, though you don't see the evidence for that yet.)

I tend to agree with this hypothesis because, after all, how do you work with a Mitch McConnell when he states that the sole purpose of his group is to prevent the President from having a second term? Currently, we're seeing some early compromises (on filibusters and the debt ceiling) but that's only because the Republicans got a good swift kick in their platforms in the last election. Moreover, in the face of a shrinking demographic for the right-wing hijacked GOP, Obama has to be thinking about preparing the way for the next Democratic candidate so things like Supreme Court appointments can be made. Obama is clearly stating his intention to set a course and take initial steps. Meanwhile, the current GOP has to go somewhere and have a colonoscopy. Why even bother with their gridlocking idiocy in the short term?